“In Eden City, your future memory is your biggest recommendation. More than your grades, more than your credit history. Because your memory is more than a predictor. It’s a guarantee. “
Title: Forget Tomorrow
Author: Pintip Dunn
Series: Forget Tomorrow # 1
Publication: November 3rd 2015 by Entangled Teen
Pages: 400
Source: Publisher
Summary from Goodreads:
Imagine a world where your destiny has already been decided…by your future self.
It’s Callie’s seventeenth birthday and, like everyone else, she’s eagerly awaiting her vision―a memory sent back in time to sculpt each citizen into the person they’re meant to be. A world-class swimmer. A renowned scientist.
Or in Callie’s case, a criminal.
In her vision, she sees herself murdering her gifted younger sister. Before she can process what it means, Callie is arrested and placed in Limbo―a hellish prison for those destined to break the law. With the help of her childhood crush, Logan, a boy she hasn’t spoken to in five years, she escapes.
But on the run from her future, as well as the government, Callie sets in motion a chain of events that she hopes will change her fate. If not, she must figure out how to protect her sister from the biggest threat of all—Callie, herself.
My Thoughts:
Thank the lord! I have finally broken free of my bad book streak when I cracked this gem open. Forget Tomorrow, while being exactly like every other dystopian young adult book ever, was a thrilling ride about the meaning of fate.
Pintip Dunn has created a world we have seen many times before, I mean – these people even have to sit in a shiny chair to receive their “future memory” in order to know where they belong in society. *cough* Divergent *cough* I mean, seriously. This one girl is basically the chosen one because of her strange mental powers and, because of them, she is the key to unlocking this top secret government thingy. DIVERGENT!
Ignoring that little tidbit above, Forget Tomorrow truly was entertaining. It had an interesting, though overused, premise. The characters were interesting and mostly well developed. But, most of all, the book was about Callie’s relationship with her little sister. Sure there is romance and what not, but this book operates almost solely on the fact that Callie wants to protect Jessa – and it was beautiful. That’s not to say that there isn’t swoon worthy romance, because there is – it wouldn’t be Entangled Teen without it, but it doesn’t play a main part in the book – at least not to the same scale.
So, we open up right before Callie’s birthday – the day she will receive her future memory. These memories basically rule the entire society. You could want to be the greatest author there ever was and you could be an amazing writer, but if your memory shows you doing anything but that – that is where you are forced to go. Callie wants to be a chef, a manual chef to be exact (everything is made in this high tech future machine thingy that I can’t remember the name of). But, when Callie receives her memory – she sees herself murder her sister. Yupp, that’s right. Sweet little Callie who only wants to protect and love on Jessa, kills her – at least according to her future memory. You see where this is going, right? Basically, she turns herself in (shocking) and spends a few weeks in prison listening to and seeing horrible things. But then, one day Logan breaks her out. Logan is both her childhood somewhat friend and the local hunk of this book. So, Logan and Callie escape the facility and then make a run for this so called safe haven out in the woods… a lot of other shit goes down, more Divergentness ensues. The ending! Oh my god the ending of this book is a total rip off, grrr. But, I still liked it – it still tore my heart into a million little pieces because I completely understand why she did what she did and I know that I would do the exact same thing. If you’ve read it, you know exactly what I’m talking about and exactly why it is identical to Allegiant.
Callie was a good main character, I’ll give Dunn that. She was kind and gentle, but she also wasn’t afraid to throw down to get stuff done. She is literally driven by her need to protect Jessa, which is something I really identified with. She was somewhat aloof, though. Like, she would suddenly make a huge, life changing decision out of nowhere with no build up to it – or she would completely contradict herself. This was mostly true when it came to Logan, there was a lot of stuff going on with Logan – not all of it good. They had their swoony moments, but mostly, it was her trying to avoid him for the greater good and it just pissed me off. Like, if I were him, I wouldn’t put up with all of her crap.
Also, the romance. I couldn’t get into it. There were moments, like I said, where I really felt connected to Callie and Logan’s relationship. But, the pacing was way off. Things happen way too fast throughout the majority of this book. It was one of my biggest issues really, besides the fact that this is a rewritten version of Divergent. There was a lot of stuff going on and not enough space to cram it all into; in the end it just felt rushed which really took away from the overall experience. I wanted to see Callie emotionally wrestle with herself more, I wanted to see more description of what was going on. I don’t mind solid action, but when trying to send a message with that action a little more explanation is needed. It wasn’t strong enough on its own.
Overall, despite my issues, Forget Tomorrow was an entertaining escape from reality. Honestly, I really did enjoy it. I loved the family aspect, I loved how willing Callie was to do what was necessary, and I love the whole idea of fate against free will. This book explored it in a new way, I’ll give it that. If you’re looking for an exciting read, or if you just love Dystopian books as much as I do, I do highly recommend you read this. Dig a little deeper and go past the surface layers, you’ll find this book is saying much more than you originally thought.
Reed's Reads & Reviews 